Slowing the Tempo

For years, we’ve heard that tempo runs are an ideal way to increase our lactate threshold. Defined as a medium-hard effort (i.e., 10K to half marathon pace) over 20 or so minutes (3 to 4 miles), they’re a year-round staple of most training programs.

Performed right at lactate threshold, they provide a strong stimulus to improve this important performance predictor. Given their popularity, you can imagine my surprise when Keith Livingstone, a successful Kiwi runner from the Arthur Lydiard system, recently suggested that these 20-minute tempo runs were overrated.Livingstone’s contention is that tempo runs are too hard on the body and that runners are better off running “sub-threshold” runs instead of tempo runs. He suggested that doing tempo runs at the wrong stage of a season (i.e., in the early base-building phase) can bring the runner to a peak too early and that many runners quickly plateau in their race performances when tempo runs are performed too frequently. He further asserted that while scientists may have cornered us into the 20-minute run at lactate threshold speed as the “optimal lactate threshold workout,” it was runners and coaches in the past who found out that longer runs at sub-lactate threshold speeds provided the best path to long-term success.

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He pointed specifically to Lydiard’s base training phase. “Many North American coaches and athletes are under the illusion that Lydiard’s ‘base period’ was 100 miles a week repeated eight times in a row,” says Livingstone. “The reality was the opposite. We used to call it a ‘build-up,’ because it was a deliberate and systematic program that slightly increased the intensity of two key effort runs each week. It really did build up, ever so easily each time, so that by the end of two months your aerobic level was very, very high.”

Lydiard included two one-hour-long runs each week (Monday and Friday) run at “three-quarter effort.” While three-quarter effort is hard to define, I analyzed the times that Lydiard’s best runners completed the three-quarter effort runs in, and it’s clear that this effort was slightly faster than marathon race pace (probably between 30K and marathon race pace) but slower than what we call tempo run pace. “For athletes such as Olympians Peter Snell, Barry Magee and Murray Halberg, the ‘three-quarter effort run’ may have been 10 miles in about 62 minutes at the start of the ‘build-up’, and gradually over eight weeks this may havedropped to 10 miles in about 54 minutes,” Livingstone says. “When Lydiard used to talk about ‘marathon conditioning’ for his middle distance athletes, the key was that a couple of runs each week in the build-up were at the athlete’s current perceived ‘three-quarter effort’, or marathon race pace. In other words, the regularly applied effort level never changed, but after eight weeks or 16 efforts, the speed was a lot faster. Athletes who try to run a tempo session at a set pace during their base phase are introducing an unnecessary element too early and too far away from the business end of the season.

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In conversations with other runners of the late 1960s and 1970s and a review of some of our classic training books from that era, it’s clear that these sub-threshold runs were more common than our current idea of the tempo run. It seems that in the days of old, runners and coaches preferred their “tempo runs” to be much longer than our 20-minute runs. This, of course, necessitated a slightly slower pace. This does not suggest that tempo runs aren’t valuable, but rather that they should be moved closer to the race, leaving sub-threshold runs for the winter base-building phase.

Many of our best runners of today also include longer tempo runs which match the pace/effort of these sub-threshold runs. Deena, Meb, Sell, Abdi, Ryan and many other top runners are showing our past (longer sub-threshold runs) may be our future, as their times are surpassing those of the “golden era” of U.S. distance running. Given that winter is a time to build your aerobic strength for spring racing, consider dumping tempo runs and instead include a weekly sub-threshold run instead. (Advanced runners can include two sub-threshold runs each week.) In your first week, start with a 15- to 20-minute warm-up and then run 20 minutes at around 15 to 20 seconds per mile slower than your usual tempo run. Then, cool down to complete a 60- to 75-minute total run.

Each subsequent week, add 10 more minutes (or two more miles) until you get to an hour or 10 miles of sub-threshold running, whichever comes first (see chart). You’ll need to shorten the warm-up and cool-down to 10 to 15 minutes to keep the total run time manageable. Once you reach one hour or 10 miles at sub-threshold pace, run this workout for four more weeks to maximize the benefits of sub-threshold running. Don’t try to increase the pace, but if you get faster with the same effort then all the better. After eight weeks, you’ll be ready for faster, race-specific training.

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